A Low-Cost Tele-Presence Wheelchair System

This paper presents the architecture and implementation of a tele-presence wheelchair system based on tele-presence robot, intelligent wheelchair, and touch screen technologies. The tele-presence wheelchair system consists of a commercial electric wheelchair, an add-on tele-presence interaction module, and a touchable live video image based user interface (called TIUI). The tele-presence interaction module is used to provide video-chatting for an elderly or disabled person with the family members or caregivers, and also captures the live video of an environment for tele-operation and semi-autonomous navigation. The user interface developed in our lab allows an operator to access the system anywhere and directly touch the live video image of the wheelchair to push it as if he/she did it in the presence. This paper also discusses the evaluation of the user experience

Consumption Intentions toward green restaurants: Application of theory of planned behavior and altruism

Testing 429 valid questionnaires distributed in 20 green restaurants located in Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung, this study explored the intentions of consumers to dine at green restaurants based on their perceptions of green restaurant attributes and their attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control toward green restaurants. The results of this study indicated that the perceptions of green restaurant attributes positively influenced consumers' attitudes toward green restaurants, which in turn positively influenced their intentions to visit green restaurants. In addition, consumers' subjective norms and perceived behavioral control both positively influenced consumption intentions regarding green restaurants. We used altruism as the moderating variable in this study. The results indicated that altruism exhibited a strong and significant influence on the relationship between attitude and consumption intentions. In order to promote green restaurants, managers must examine how the restaurant industry, government units, and academic units can contribute to enable the dining industry to meet international standards and cater to the international trends of the "chimney-free" dining industry

Accretion Disc-Jet Couplings in X-ray Binaries

When the matter from a companion star is accreted towards the central compact accretor, i.e. a black hole (BH) or a neutron star (NS), an accretion disc and a jet outflow will form, providing bight X-ray and radio emission, which is known as X-ray binaries (XRBs). In the low/hard state, there exist disc-jet couplings in XRBs, but it remains uncertain whether the jet power comes from the disc or the central accretor. Moreover, BHXRBs have different properties compared with NSXRBs: quiescent BHXRBs are typically two to three orders of magnitude less luminous than NSXRBs in X-ray, whereas BHXRBs are more radio loud than NSXRBs. In observations, an empirical correlation has been established between radio and X-ray luminosity, $L_{\rm R} \propto L_{\rm X}^b$, where $b\sim 0.7$ for BHXRBs and $b \sim 1.4$ for non-pulsating NSXRBs. However, there are some outliers of BHXRBs showing unusually steep correlation as NSXRBs at higher luminosities. In this work, under the assumption that the origin of jet power is related to the internal energy of the inner disc, we apply our magnetized, radiatively efficient thin disc model and the well-known radiatively inefficient accretion flow model to NSXRBs and BHXRBs. We find that the observed radio/X-ray correlations in XRBs can be well understood by the disc-jet couplings.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Taking your next vacation from home: Motivations and impacts of using live-streaming tourism

The research investigates a novel and alternative form of tourism, namely, live-streaming tourism (LST). Live-streaming tourism empowers individuals to experience new destinations at home without the risks associated with large-scale travel. Meanwhile, it boosts the economy by enabling destinations and micro-entrepreneurs to launch an alternative business model and create new employment opportunities. Specifically, the current study proposes and tests a conceptual model of viewers’ motivations and consequences of using live-streaming tourism based on the United Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2.0 (UTAUT2). We explore how existing UTAUT2 antecedents, together with newly incorporated LST antecedents, affect viewers’ reuse and Word-of-Mouth intention of LST through the mediated effect of co-creation value. We adopt an online survey method to collect an estimated sample of 1000 viewers who have participated in live-streaming tourism in the past twelve months